Steve Lamoreaux, professor of physics at Yale, and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab, has recently published; with co-author Robert Golub, professor of physics at North Carolina State University; The Historical and Physical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Lamoreaux said, “There is an enormous number of books and other writings concerned with explaining and interpreting quantum mechanics. Standard texts tend to concentrate on methodology and applications to specific problems, while discussions of interpretation and the historical development tend to contain a minimum of mathematics. The idea behind our book is that to gain a real understanding of the subject, some acquaintance with the historical development is essential; after all that history is the narrative of how humanity learned quantum mechanics. The ideas were not found written on stone tablets, but were slowly and painstakingly developed by people just like us.”
Lamoreaux continued, “We also provide accompanying discussions for the various interpretations that have been suggested, providing sufficient mathematical illustrations that highlight the respective features and differences.”
“We conceived the book in 2015 and secured the contract with Oxford University Press summer 2016 after we came up with a title. We finished the manuscript in May 2022, so this was a six year project,” Lamoreaux said.
For more information, please see the publisher’s website here.